There’s an unsurprising relationship between employee morale and the physical space in which they work.
There are also some weird ways in which changes to an office space can impact things like cognitive function and productivity. A study by the World Green Building Society found that better office air conditioning correlated with an 11% uptick in productivity.
But there are lots of different ways in which changing the physical office space can make people happier and smarter. Having the right amenities is at the heart of this. In this article, we have a look at some of the best amenities ideas that turn commercial offices into spaces finely tuned for productivity.
There aren’t a whole lot of occupational health and safety hazards in a commercial office, but sitting is definitely one of them. The negative health impact of sitting poorly or too much goes well beyond the kind of musculoskeletal issues your parents warned you about.
The government-backed research project BeUpstanding advises that sitting too much at work can actually lead to cancer, depression, poor focus, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even death.
There are two critical ways in which office amenities can combat these short- and long-term health impacts.
The first is obviously to just use better chairs. The best office chairs provide sufficient support to take pressure off certain muscles and keep your abdomen in the shape it’s meant to be. The key features to look for are pelvic and lumbar support. But the chair also needs to be customisable to a person’s height and body shape for this support to work properly.
Other commercial office furniture ideas include standing chairs or kneeling chairs. These chairs force you to engage your muscles correctly, keep the blood flowing, and therefore help maintain cognitive focus.
Christie Spaces offers a range of modern adjustable chairs so that you can work comfortably, stay focused, and take care of your long-term health.
The other critical way of avoiding the health impacts of sitting too much is also kind of obvious: sit less.
One way to do this is to use standing desks, but standing desks only work if you assume a good posture when using them. If you don’t, they could be causing even more harm.
But it is good to stand up frequently at work and get your blood flowing. One easy way to get people up out of their chairs is to employ a collaborative work culture. This gets team members shifting between workstations, coming together for discussions, and just generally moving. In particular, using hot-desking furniture is a great way to encourage your team to move about more during the day.
But, of course, the other way of getting your team up out of their chairs is to give them somewhere else to go.
Offering recreational amenities has the double benefit of getting team members moving and also giving them a morale boost. The upside of providing recreational amenities has meant that things like games consoles are now part of modern office furnishings.
At Christie Spaces, we think it’s best to get away from screens and to get the blood flowing a bit more. This is why we offer games rooms with amenities such as:
It’s also essential that employees have basic amenities that allow them to socialise with one another, even if they’re not slogging it out on the ping pong table.
Following this philosophy, Christie Spaces offers all of its office users access to amenities like comfy breakrooms, games rooms and beautiful kitchens. These are great places to go when you just need to step away from your work for a bit, grab a bite, or touch base privately with a coworker.
It’s a little bit difficult to add some nice green parkland to your office, but a great office space will have access to external amenities like this just by virtue of its location. At Christie Spaces, our CBD office locations come with great internal amenities, and external ones as well.
All of our office locations are a stone’s throw away from all the amenities you would expect to find in an international city: parkland, gyms, cafes, bars, restaurants, and more.
A workplace with good office amenities leads to the improved physical and emotional wellbeing of the people who work in it, which in turn helps them reach their cognitive potential.
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